A Mechanic's Life - Tales From Under the Hood

roadburner

The worst DCTs are found in the Focus and 500L. My experience has been with the BMW DCT and the VW DSG. The BMW and VW dual clutch gearboxes are acceptably smooth for the most part, and durability hasn't been an issue.

I'd make certain that all servicing recommendations for the DSG are followed- and don't rely on the service department to know what those recommendations are, either. Back in 2007 I considered buying a GTI with a DSG; even though the owners manual specified a fluid change at 40,000 miles only one out of the three Louisville VW dealers knew that a DSG required periodic service. One dealer informed me that "The newer transmissions are sealed and don't need service. Everything is done through the computer." The other dealer asked me "What's a DSG?"

Mr_Shiftright

The Japanese *usually* do their homework, so I wouldn't be too concerned. That's an interesting way of solving the rough shift problem, but one has to wonder at some point, as complexity is piled upon complexity, if it's all worth it. How much do you really gain over a 3rd pedal or a slick modern automatic?

roadburner

Mr_Shiftright said:

The Japanese *usually* do their homework, so I wouldn't be too concerned. That's an interesting way of solving the rough shift problem, but one has to wonder at some point, as complexity is piled upon complexity, if it's all worth it. How much do you really gain over a 3rd pedal or a slick modern automatic?

That's the thing; the 8HP45 in my 2er is every bit as good as a DCT- upshifts are very quick, it rev-matches on downshifts, and it has an effective launch mode. I tell people I'd love an M2 with three pedals, but I'd take an automatic M240i over an M2 DCT. The M240i is just as quick, it's smoother around town, and it gets better fuel economy than the DCT.

Mr_Shiftright

Exactly--didn't Ford teach Ferrari this lesson at LeMans? Sometimes added complexity doesn't get you where you need to be but reliability does.

andres3

roadburner said:

Mr_Shiftright said:

The Japanese *usually* do their homework, so I wouldn't be too concerned. That's an interesting way of solving the rough shift problem, but one has to wonder at some point, as complexity is piled upon complexity, if it's all worth it. How much do you really gain over a 3rd pedal or a slick modern automatic?

That's the thing; the 8HP45 in my 2er is every bit as good as a DCT- upshifts are very quick, it rev-matches on downshifts, and it has an effective launch mode. I tell people I'd love an M2 with three pedals, but I'd take an automatic M240i over an M2 DCT. The M240i is just as quick, it's smoother around town, and it gets better fuel economy than the DCT.

iF THE m240I IS AS QUICK AS THE m2 i WANT MY MONEY BACK FROM BMW, and I haven't even bought one yet.

roadburner

I was referring to acceleration alone. The M2 is a better track car, at the expense of some civility.

henryn

I've only owned one dual clutch. That was the 2013 VW Passat TDI. I can't say that I liked it. I did get used to it, and it was definitely not a deal breaker, not by any means. But all in all, I would prefer a conventional automatic transmission. The one in your new Acura is probably an entirely different experience, especially given they threw in a torque converter.

benjaminh

henryn said:

I've only owned one dual clutch. That was the 2013 VW Passat TDI. I can't say that I liked it. I did get used to it, and it was definitely not a deal breaker, not by any means. But all in all, I would prefer a conventional automatic transmission. The one in your new Acura is probably an entirely different experience, especially given they threw in a torque converter.

Yeah, it's pretty smooth. Like it so far. Used the paddle shifters a bit today. Not likely to use em much, but since I was almost an exclusively manual shifter from 1980 to 2016 it's nice to have a tiny taste of transmission control again.

Mr_Shiftright

I might like a dual clutch if I could have a fake clutch pedal installed that I could just press once in a while

You know, like a pacifier or my little blankie.....I need to be weened off 3 pedals slowly.

andres3

henryn said:

I've only owned one dual clutch. That was the 2013 VW Passat TDI. I can't say that I liked it. I did get used to it, and it was definitely not a deal breaker, not by any means. But all in all, I would prefer a conventional automatic transmission. The one in your new Acura is probably an entirely different experience, especially given they threw in a torque converter.

I think the TDI-based DSG's were programmed more oddly than the typical DSG. I would try a gas engine DSG before making a decision based on a TDI DSG.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

I might like a dual clutch if I could have a fake clutch pedal installed that I could just press once in a while

Fake clutch,,,, The thought of that made me think of the old Autostick.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostick

Mr_Shiftright

You know, I always liked those for some reason---but you have to remember never to rest your hand on the gear lever, or it'll pop into neutral.

thecardoc3

That's one thing the autostick did right. Back in those days, resting your hand on the shift lever tended to increase shift fork wear. I rebuilt a lot of transmissions because of that.

toomanyfumes

Are the newer manuals different? When I place my arm on the console of my 2012 Mustang, my hand naturally rests on the shifter. 

roadburner

toomanyfumes said:

Are the newer manuals different? When I place my arm on the console of my 2012 Mustang, my hand naturally rests on the shifter. 

When I instruct at HPDEs I tell students that the only time I want to see their hand on the shift knob is when they are executing a shift.

toomanyfumes

I try, I'm glad you're not there to slap my hand lol.

roadburner

All it takes is practice...

isellhondas

Mr_Shiftright said:

You know, I always liked those for some reason---but you have to remember never to rest your hand on the gear lever, or it'll pop into neutral.

I knew a kid who would put his autostick vw in first geat and he would hang on to shifter which kicked it nto neutral. He would then rev it up hard and jerk his hand off the shifter.

It as amusing to watch as the front end would pop up and the car would take off. No idea how long it lasted?

Mr_Shiftright

You could even get a Porsche 911 with something like that. It was called a "Sport-o-Matic" but it was only a 4-speed IIRC.

thecardoc3

thecardoc3 said:

qbrozen said:

VW's FSI 2.0T was also victim to harsh carbon buildup. Not sure on the TSI.

so what was changed in the N55 that would prevent carbon buildup?

I'm doing a 2008 Audi S5 this weekend. I'll get some before and after pics for you.

The job got delayed but I have it apart now.



Yes, that's all you can see of the intake valves on this FSI. I grab some pics after cleaning this all up.

xwesx

Wow! Thanks for sharing!

thecardoc3

Interesting POV. https://www.centerforperformanceimprovement.com/blog/2018/4/26/your-tech-shortage-is-not-a-good-excuse

Now of course the reason the dealers have to be told this is??????

thecardoc3

https://blog.nada.org/2018/08/03/nada-foundation-meets-with-white-house-to-discuss-technician-shortage/

thecardoc3

Let's move this to where it is more appropriate.

Mr_Shiftright said:

You could get lucky and finish it in 3 hours or you could battle 50 years of solid rust. I presume you have an air chisel and all that.

Luck has nothing to do with it. There simply isn't anything with that repair that can occur that I haven't seen and dealt with before. That includes having to ream the axle and install a sleeve as well as bending the axle to correct an alignment angle. That even includes being able to tell when only the replacement of the axle, knuckle or both was going to correct an issue.

You mentioned rust. Here in the northeast we deal with more rust than anywhere else in the country. What you wouldn't know is that even when logic dictated that additional labor should have been charged it almost never was so we were expected to finish the job in the quoted time whether we fought rust or not. That either forced us to figure out how to deal with it efficiently or get shown the door because we wouldn't be productive enough. That being said, rust doesn't actually slow me down, and even most broken bolts in the assembly are only a minor inconvenience usually do not prevent me from exceeding the normal flatrate time.

Now what you really should have been thinking when you saw that was "wow is that all you were allowed to get the job done?" The warranty time is in fact under two hours, not that there were ever failures inside the typical warranty period but if someone purchased a factory extended warranty then for as long as the warranty was in effect the repair only paid the warranty rate. There was another way that we had to do these in the warranty time and that was if it was done previously based on Ford's lifetime warranty they used to push for repairs that were done in the dealer.

Since you had to take what I wrote as bragging, how about I do something that lives up to it.

A Friday morning, March 1979, during the 10am coffee break that we always took.
The service manager, Bob S. came over to us and started talking saying that it was a good thing for us that we were hourly because we would all be starving if we were flat rate. I asked him how many hours had I actually turned so far that day to which he asked what all had I done?

Between 8am and 10 am I had.....
Done a state inspection on a 1975 F250 2WD.
Replaced: The king pins, radius arm bushings, front shocks, front brakes which included rebuilding the calipers and machining the rotors. It was sitting on the ground ready for the road test. Another tech was using the alignment machine so I was going to have to wait to use it to finish the job. Just before lunch he came over to me and told me how many hours I had actually turned so far that morning. I was about half way done rebuilding a C-6 by then.

They gave me a 25 cent an hour raise that day......

thecardoc3

I just read a quote attributed to an amazing technician from the New York City area that has recently passed.

"TL"

Advice on skill in the trade:

"Here it is ........... You must have the ability to absorb
knowledge like a sponge, followed by the ability to take
crap like a toilet. Then you have to be 100% right , 100% of
the time , and be willing to do all this for 1/4 of what
it's worth. OK .... Ready for the bad part ??"

roadburner

I had a pleasant surprise at my local tire store, a couple of weeks ago I noticed a slow leak in the RF tire of the Clubman. I took it to the store and they discovered some corrosion on the rim. They cleaned it up and I installed it on the car. My wife drove it the next day and noticed a slight vibration through the wheel at 60 mph. I verified that and today I took the wheel/tire assembly back to the store and asked them to balance it. I told them it looked like it may have lost a wheel weight but that I didn't think it was their fault. In less than a half hour the wheel was ready for pickup. I asked how much I owed them and they said "No charge." I reinstalled the wheel tire assembly and road tested the car- the vibration was gone.

Mr_Shiftright

You can't be right 100% of the time, nor can you always be the fastest gun. Some car is going to shoot you down in the dirt, sooner or later.

The truly smart mechanic knows what NOT to tackle, if he's not trained and prepared to do it.

I could claim to have fixed every car I ever worked on. How? By avoiding a fair number of those I didn't work on.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

You can't be right 100% of the time, nor can you always be the fastest gun. Some car is going to shoot you down in the dirt, sooner or later.

Of course no one can be right 100% of the time, but to be seen as skilled techs would have to be.

Mr_Shiftright said:

The truly smart mechanic knows what NOT to tackle, if he's not trained and prepared to do it.

That really means never taking on anything new. No amount of training can prepare anyone for every possible thing that can ever go wrong.

Mr_Shiftright said:

I could claim to have fixed every car I ever worked on. How? By avoiding a fair number of those I didn't work on.

You should have seen us coach a Ford technician last week who was tackling a stop/start failure issue. This 2017 model car would randomly (about once a week) shut down at a stop and fail to restart, it was not setting any codes. The only thing the owner could tell them was the dash would display, "Stop/Start system failure. Shift to park and restart. Over a two week time, Ford engineering and Ford Technical assist were unable to help him, they just had him toss a few parts, unsuccesfully. I laid out the plan for him to follow starting with the perspective that instead of thinking of it as a stop/start system issue, treat it like any other car that randomly stalls and fails to restart. It was his first time using a digital oscilloscope. We selected which circuits to monitor first and it took a week but when it acted up he proved that he lost power to the injectors. From there it was just a matter of resetting the test points to prove exactly why. I had helped him preplan those checks so that he could make as much progress as possible when the symptom occurred. The point is, collectively none of us had real experience with that car and that system, but that didn't matter. We helped him nail it anyway. BTW. The word from Ford tech assist is they want to know more about how we came up with the plan that worked to solve that problem. They are very interested in how to put the scope to better use and want to develop classes for the technicians.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

The truly smart mechanic knows what NOT to tackle, if he's not trained and prepared to do it.

Hmmm.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=979&v=NuAMczraBIM

Mr_Shiftright

He's training to do something. I have no problem with that.

So really, you'd just tear into a new Ferrari and learn as you go?

Good luck with that...

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

He's training to do something. I have no problem with that.

So really, you'd just tear into a new Ferrari and learn as you go?

Good luck with that...

Would it be OK if he did that?

Mr_Shiftright

Depends if you are doing that as a hobbyist or doing it to someone's car as a business. I don't want anyone "learning" on my car.

thecardoc3

Then you shouldn't own a car. For techs, walking up to a problem with a vehicle system that they have never seen before is normal. It is impossible to train for everything that could ever go wrong on any one car, let alone the thousands of possible models that could show up at a shop some day.

For techs to truly excel, the need to learn new things never stops. That cannot be something that is wrong when viewed from any perspective. Trying to suggest that it is wrong to have to learn on the job is itself what is wrong. That Ford tech had to learn new skills on the fly, skills that techs like me created and learned on our own, while both at home studying and on the job. Then he had to go to the shop and apply them. Lucky for him, that vehicle owner, as well as his dealer he had us to guide him. That car would not be repaired today if what you are saying is the way things really should be.

Mr_Shiftright

I don't take my car to people who don't know my car. If the tech can't find the hood latch, this isn't a good sign.

thecardoc3

So I wonder just how many times you have walked up to look at a car and suddenly found out that you didn't know where the hood latch was...……..

roadburner

Mr_Shiftright said:

I don't take my car to people who don't know my car. If the tech can't find the hood latch, this isn't a good sign.

Or the tech who was looking for the engine in the rear of a Viper...

thecardoc3

roadburner said:

Or the tech who was looking for the engine in the rear of a Viper...

Give one to a tech who has never worked on anything other than a Testarossa and that wouldn't surprise me.

Mr_Shiftright

We are in the age of specialization now.

xwesx

Mr_Shiftright said:

We are in the age of specialization now.

True, but as Doc has proven himself, that doesn't necessarily mean brand, model, etc....

Mr_Shiftright

No, that's true. It could be electronics, transmissions, engine-building. You could be a specialist within a more diversified shop.

thecardoc3

Well before this one disappears here are what the valves look like after the walnut shell treatment. I still need to finish with some solvents, but compare this pic to the previous ones.

Mr_Shiftright

Tidy. Are you going to do anything to the valves at all--grind or lap or ???

thecardoc3

Not for this issue. This is just how bad the intake valves and ports carbon up on an Audi FSI.

thecardoc3

BTW. Lapping the valves only draws a line around them so that you can see if they have been cut correctly. The idea that doing that makes them seal better is a myth.

thecardoc3

Are service and repair questions going to show up in a specific topic area or is manually searching through the entire recent discussions list going to be the only way to find them?

kyfdx

thecardoc3 said:

Are service and repair questions going to show up in a specific topic area or is manually searching through the entire recent discussions list going to be the only way to find them?

You can still find them under “Repairs and Maintenance”. We have a glitch right now, where the newest posts aren’t floating to the top.

Smarter people than me are working hard on solving that issue, right now.

thecardoc3

LOL. Tell them "Ever since you...…"

kyfdx

thecardoc3 said:

LOL. Tell them "Ever since you...…"

"Gotta put it up on the rack"

Mr_Shiftright

"They all do that".

pensfan83

Perhaps it was the way I was viewing the forums but this topic never populated on my dashboard. Since the changeover it does and I have read through quite a few of the 272 pages and while I'm not even a casual DIY mechanic it's been very informative and enlightening.